Two important goals of our COBRE Phase III proposal are to sustain a collaborative multidisciplinary research environment by providing support for pilot projects and to encourage and facilitate collaborative interactions between basic science and clinical/translational investigators. Accordingly, the pilot project component will provide research opportunities for novel, innovative, highly competitive meritorious projects with high likelihood for garnering extramural research support. Projects that have the potential of significantly expanding the scope of current research efforts and stimulating collaborative multidisciplinary research and new clinical/translational projects will be given priority. It is anticipated that most applications will be from scientists in departments from the Medical School (Physiology, Pharmacology, Medicine, Pediatrics), the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (Epidemiology) and the School of Science and Engineering (Biomedical Engineering). Projects that address important, novel and significant issues related to the broad area encompassed by hypertension, renal and cardiovascular research will be considered. Applications will be subjected to a rigorous internal and external review process to ensure that funds are provided only to highly meritorious pilot projects that are likely to lead to extramural research support and will stimulate multidisciplinary collaborative interactions. It is important to provide sufficient funds to allow a timely development of preliminary data in order to meet grant deadlines. Thus, we propose to provide up to $50,000 per pilot project to support one year research efforts. This program will encourage submission of interdisciplinary grant proposals, and result in increased productivity as reflected by presentations at national meetings and publications in peer reviewed journals. The pilot projects program will stimulate faculty to undertake research in hypertension, renal and cardiovascular diseases and thus expand the activities of the parent program. Furthermore, these grants will help Tulane retain the most talented and qualified scientists in our area of research thus contributing to a sustainable productive research environment of the highest quality.